Response to TA T-and-A

The following comes from one of the responses to the grad-stripper column from Salon.com.
I felt it directly related to the theme of this blog, so I copy it completely from here:

Good luck

One of the things they don't tell you when you enter a PhD program is that you better have family money either from parents or a spouse or don't even think about starting. As this poor woman points out most grad students only get funded for a couple of years of what for most is at least, at least, a 5-6 year endeavor. And for that matter "funding" usually means enough money to share an apartment. In my experience at a fairly prestigious humanities department, the most successful students were not necessarily the brightest but the ones who had spouses to support them. As competitive as the academic market is, one pretty much has to have not only a dissertation, but a publication record when you apply for jobs. Many, like me, had to work full-time just to support ourselves, which leaves little time for what is in essence another full-time job.

Unfortunately I have no solution to offer for this young woman's dilemmma. But God love 'er for finding a way out of the grad student vicious circle, at least for a while.

-- Cossackathon

Nude PhDs: TA T-and-A

As a daily reader of Salon.com, I seldom have a chance to link my blog to my reading. Today that changed.

The local advice column, "Since you Asked," often has the regular, ho-hum advice seekers. But there is something about a grad student stripper asking for advice that caught my attention.

Her problem, as a liberal arts major, is paying for the last bit of work without school help. She admits to being a TA in the past, which only brings more possible links between her two worlds.

Read the letters, which are supportive and full of good advice (go farther away for a couple of weeks, bank the cash, and then crank out the diss.).

I think there are some interesting issues to tease out here: future positions ruined through a Google search, random posting of phone pics into Facebook, freedom of expression/speech.

I am afraid that in reference to hiring, there is not much liberal in the liberal arts.

The state of writing today

I was doing my daily reading, which I haven't been able to do for months, and this article about teen girl's and writing sucked me in. Pookie is only 5 odd years away from teendom, and I am already starting to worry.

With story after hand-wringing story about the decline of literacy due to short attention spans, texting, et al, it is refreshing to note that the "kids" are doing pretty well by themselves. Doing pretty damn fine, really.

Perhaps the text-laden, word-saturated world they live in now (you are, yourself, reading a blog) actually increases a sense of rhetorical power...makes it tacit, like grammar. Perhaps those time-wasting movies (Saw IV, anyone?) provides a sense of pacing, story-telling and framing for effect.

Infants learn to speak by listening. Perhaps, to a greater degree than has been acknowledged, teens learn to write by "reading" their world.